A few years ago I moved from the UK to Australia and encountered this issue. At the time, I decided to leave things the way they were, and continued to use the UK store and top up money into a spare account as I needed it. This gets old very fast, particularly when you’re thousands of miles away from your bricks-and-mortar bank and something goes wrong (like your card expires or your bank suspends your card because it’s being used across the globe).

So why not just switch to an international store and use your new bank account to purchase apps, books, films and music? Well, the answer is simple — because your purchases are only valid in the country you bought them.

In other words, you can only re-download past purchases by visiting the store they were purchased in. The company has no requirement to make your purchases globally available in every store. This can be infuriating if you’ve sunk hundreds or thousands of dollars into software and media over the years.

Once you’ve switched stores, your list of purchases in iTunes and on your iPhone or iPad will be empty, but the apps you already have on your device will continue to update without a hitch. In this sense, your app purchases are tied to your Apple ID and will continue to update until you delete them.

How Do I Switch Stores?

Tap Payment Information and update your credentials with payment details for a card registered in the same country as the store you’d like to switch to (e.g. US credit card for the US App Store).

Hit Done and head back to the App Store. You will be notified your credentials are only valid for an international store, and you will be transferred to that store (sometimes this happens later when you try to download an app).

You can also do this on a Mac by opening iTunes, clicking your name and editing your payment method under Account Info. Be aware that you’ll need to cancel your Apple Music membership (if you have one) in order to change stores.

Note: As your payment info is the same regardless of the device you use, you only need to change it on one device.

How Do I Access My Past Purchases?

So what if you downloaded an expensive app which you’ve since deleted and you’d like to get it back without having to pay for it twice. In this case, you’d need to switch back to the store you originally purchased the app in the manner indicated above. In order to access your old past purchases, you’re always going to need a valid form of payment for the App Store country in which you made them.

Why does this happen? Each one of Apple’s digital storefronts is a separate trading entity, operating in accordance with local laws and taxes. This isn’t exactly new, it’s been this way since Apple first started selling via the iTunes platform. Similarly, not every App Store or iTunes inventory is the same, further fragmenting what many consider to be the least fragmented ecosystem.

Quite simply, Apple doesn’t need to give you access to your international purchases so they don’t. It’s not a policy that’s likely to change any time soon, and instead of getting angry about it you should just…

Backup & Breathe

Fortunately, it’s not all as bad as it seems. As previously mentioned, for as long as your apps were purchased with your Apple ID (regardless of store) they will continue to update. You won’t get the dreaded Apple ID password prompt that you get if you download something using someone else’s account.

Once complete, you can find a full backup of your apps within your iTunes folder (/Users/Username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications) as .IPA files. You’ll be able to freely transfer your apps using iTunes, and these apps will even be copied back across when you restore a backup even though they were purchased in another store. Media will be stored in your iTunes library (/Users/Username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media), as it always is.

Off You Go

Once you’ve got a copy of your favorite apps and other media locally, and you intend on using the same Apple ID in your new country of residence (with a different form of payment) you shouldn’t have any problems. Apps will update, music will play and your new purchases will be made in your new country of residence.

Remember that if you ever need to change store again (perhaps back to your original country) you will have the same problem when it comes to accessing purchases made in your new place of residence. Something to think about if you know where you’re going to be in five or ten years.

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Tamas Kelemen

January 13, 2019 at 8:58 am

I may be wrong but all of this was not an issue even back in 2012.

You just have to be a little brave.

I moved from Sweden to Hungary. I switched my iTunes settings accordingly with a new credit card. Yes, iCloud did not know about my Swedish purchases. However, if I tapped on the price tag of a paid app that I bought back in Sweden, iTunes told me that I can download that app free of charge.

So there is absolutely no need for all this hassle written in this article.

But this was between two countries in the EU. It might work differently for other countries.

if i did that then my son in singapore, my brother in Thailand would not be able to access my Apple TV movies anymore, which about to 560 movies and about the same in tv shows and music, plus about 350 apps at least 50 of them paid apps. Changinc countries and apple id is just not viable because downloading all those movies to my mac would take up about 8 terabytes of space, and my family with apple tv on my account around the world would lose the movies.
Hence i supposedly live in dronnigens glade america for Apple and dont have a payment method, but actually live in Thailand and use topup codes to manually add funds to the US store account... however it is a pain in the ass in this day and age that you can just change adress and credit card numbers as you change countries... this is an international world, and people work around the world spending years in different places, and need to switch countries more easily with Apple. it is not well thought out, and yes, international law is a Bummer.

I once would have agreed with this article about switching countries but now under iOS 11 all my previous movies have appeared and are available to watch once more. I moved from New Zealand back to Australia recently.

Apple makes it PITA for them to abide by rules of the country that Apple ID is tied to. So basically one Apple ID is tied to one country. I have account balance in my account which I use it to buy iCloud storage and other apps from US stores. I am visiting for a month and I can download apps that are US Store - but there are few apps only listed in visiting country that are free, but cannot be downloaded without changing the country. If you have balance amount, one cannot change the country unless I make use of all the available credit.
So I just gave up on downloading the country specific app and it ain't worth the hassles.

I was about to purchase Final Cut Pro X, because i now have a job. The price in the uk has gone up to £299 so i am sticking with my Pirated FCPX Until i can change my app store to usa store, then purchase FCPX for $299, Because in dollars it is £50 cheaper. you can also still download past purchases from a different app store.

that is exactly why Apple and DRM in general are pieces of garbage. it shows their level of respect for customer. then they are surprised that people are pirating software and other intelectual property.

As I live in south america I had to deal with this forcefully.
The ecuadorian apple store just came into existence a mere 2-3 years ago. back when I got my first iPhone I could not buy anything. Even tho they sold them in every store around the country. Luckily I had US issued credit card and went on pretending I lived there. Until the ecuadorian app store spawned and I excitedly made the change. Nightmare.

Why can't they do like Google and have a unique store that processes all payments and stuff ? I am sure google also must deal with individual countries and their legislation.
I am a developer so i must have an iPhone as well as an Android device. One gives me problems, the other does not. Get on with the times Apple !!

I would advise to create a secondary iTunes account. I do not believe a 2nd device is necessary as long as you dont mind switching id's. See my write-up on subscribing to iTunes music which required me to have a 2nd iTunes account.

If you download a purchase with one iTunes account and switch to the other, you will receive a message stating that you cannot download content to the same machine on a different ID for 90 days. I ran into this last week. The upshot is, if you want access to your original purchases and use a new or country switched account, you'll need to download all of your original purchases locally first (bye bye cloud usage).

Interesting, when I wrote this article I don't think that was an issue. I remember hopping onto the US App Store to get a few US-specific apps, then back to my home store with no issue. I guess this is Apple's way of combatting that?

So here is another issue I live in France and travel in the US. i needed a local app changed my region to the US and purchased an Itunes gift certificate to be able to download the free app. Now I can not change back to the French region as I am required to use up my credit on the gift certificate before I can rechange stores. What idiot invent these rules? I need to try and find purchases that will cost me the remaining balance of 4.02 USD exactly otherwise I am stuck in the US store that has no value for me as I do not have a US credit card. Apple goes to
through great efforts to discourage travellers using their services. Mindboggling....

I'm in the same situation and the auto updates on the Mac do NOT work for either countries, asking endless times to switch from one store to the other.

The only MANUAL process I found that works is, you have to let's say in the Australian store (as logged in) on your Mac, go to the App updates, click the first one waiting, if it asks you to login to the UK store just hit cancel, continue for all the apps waiting until there are no more apps to be updated from the Australian store. Then logout from Australian store and login to UK store, and repeat the process...

Very time consuming and really upsetting...

This is when you maintain 2 different accounts for 2 different countries, I don't want to imagine the nightmare if I merge them...

At least Apple changed their policy about allowing you to have only 1 App Store account in the World, yes only 1! (4 years ago)

They cancelled one of my accounts, since I'm also a developer it cut me from my apps that I developed using that account because my developer ID was associated with that.

When I contacted they enabled it, but this kept happening every once a week, so I escalated the issue and finally a higher in ranking agent took my call. He said that I can only have 1 app store since I have one LEGAL residence. I said how do you know that I only have 1 LEGAL residence? He answered when you live more than 6 months in a country that becomes your residency and you can only have your account in that country.

My answer quite surprised him and contributed Apple to change their policy with their 1 store limit.

I said, I live 3 months in country X, 3 months in country Y, 3 months country Z and 3 months on my yacht in international waters, which App Store can I use?

«Once you’ve switched stores, your list of purchases in iTunes and on your iPhone or iPad will be empty, but the apps you already have on your device will continue to update without a hitch. In this sense, your app purchases are tied to your Apple ID and will continue to update until you delete them.»

Just to make sure. Is it true for the apps I downloaded from another country's app store that are not accessible in my country's store? Will they continue to update?

There is a very easy get-around. Acquire an old and otherwise redundant & virtually worthless iPhone 4 or iPad2 (say) and start up a brand new AppleID account on it in the new country that you want to access the App Store. You do not actually need to register a credit card issued in the new country as it appears that you can use iTunes gift vouchers instead. I have just done all this to obtain a free app here in New Zealand to access Lightbox NZ, a local television on-demand streaming service, that I cannot access using my home country (UK) App Store. Job done!
Ian Daish (kiwidaish@icloud.com)